George Patton Essay, Research Paper

U.S. Army officer George Smith Patton was an outstanding

practitioner of mobile tank warfare in the European and

Mediterranean theatres during World War II. His strict

discipline, toughness, and self-sacrifice elicited pride within

his ranks. General Patton was referred to as “Old

Blood-and-Guts.” In 1909 he graduated from U.S military

academy at West Point, New York. He began his army career

as a cavalry lieutenant and After serving with the U.S. Tank

Corps in World War I, Patton became a vigorous proponent of

tank warfare. He was made a tank brigade commander in July

1940. On April 4, 1941, he was promoted to major general,

and two weeks later he was made commander of the 2nd

Armored Division. Soon after the Japanese surprise air attack

on Pearl Harbor, he was made corps commander in charge of

both the 1st and 2nd Armored divisions and organized the

desert training centre at Indio, California. Patton was

commanding general of the western task force during the U.S.

operations in North Africa in November 1942. He was

promoted to the rank of lieutenant general in March 1943 and

led the U.S. 7th Army in Sicily, employing his armour in a

rapid drive that captured Palermo in July. The apogee of his

career came with the dramatic sweep of his 3rd Army across

northern France in the summer of 1944. Prior to the

Normandy Invasion, he was publicly placed in command of

the 1st U.S. Army Group, a fictitious army whose supposed

marshaling in eastern England helped to deceive German

commanders into thinking that the invasion would take place

in the Pas-de-Calais region of France. Patton’s armoured

units were not operational until August 1, almost two months

after D-Day, but by the end of the month they had captured

Mayenne, Laval, Le Mans, Reims, and Ch?lons. They did not

stop until they hurtled against the strong German defenses at

Nancy and Metz in November. In December his forces played

a strategic role in defending Bastogne in the massive Battle of

the Bulge. By the end of January 1945 Patton’s forces had

reached the German frontier; on March 1 they took Trier, and

in the next 10 days they cleared the entire region north of the

Moselle River, trapping thousands of Germans. They then

joined the 7th Army in sweeping the Saar and the Palatinate,

taking 100,000 prisoners. Patton’s military achievements

caused authorities to overlook strong civilian criticism of some

of his methods, including his widely reported striking of a

hospitalized, shell-shocked soldier in August 1943. (Patton

publicly apologized for the incident.) His public criticisms of

the Allied postwar denazification policy in Germany led to his

removal from the command of the 3rd Army in October 1945.

The controversial general died in a Heidelberg hospital after

an automobile accident near Mannheim.